Women to Receive Larger State Pension Than Men From Next Year Women will start receiving a larger state pension than men early next year, as the new state pension system closes the gender gap. The change follows a decade of narrowing payouts. Women will begin receiving a larger state pension than men early next year, marking a historic reversal in state pension payouts, according to official figures from the Department for Work and Pensions. Since the old state pension was introduced in 1948, men have typically received higher payouts, accumulating thousands of pounds more over their retirement. The shift is attributed to the new state pension system introduced in 2016, which was designed to level the playing field between men and women. New State Pension Closes Gender GapWomen who started receiving the state pension for the first time this year get just 36p less than men each week on average, equating to £18.72 less per year. Among those who retired a year ago and are now aged 67, the gap is around £1 a week. Men who reached state pension age five years ago, now aged 71, receive £322 more each year than women of the same age. However, the gap has narrowed each year since the new state pension was brought in.Former pensions minister Sir Steve Webb, who designed the new system and is now a partner at pension consultancy LCP, says that for generations women have been the poor relations in the state pension system. He explains that the post-war system was built on the assumption that men were the main breadwinners and women would be financially dependent, not needing a pension in their own right. A key aim of the new state pension was to remove this discrimination and treat men and women equally.Sir Steve says it was not possible to remove all gaps overnight while writing the blueprint for the new system, but with every passing year the gap has narrowed. He firmly expects women to overtake men for the first time in the coming months.Transitional Protections and Legacy RulesPensioners today receive one of two state pensions. Anyone who reached state pension age before April 6, 2016, gets the old basic state pension plus any earnings-related top-ups. The basic pension pays up to £184 a week, or £9,614 a year. But complicated legacy rules mean that very few people receive those amounts exactly. More than eight million people, equivalent to almost two-thirds of pensioners, still receive the old state pension, which will be phased out entirely over time.Anyone could build up entitlement to extra income during their working lives. Many were entitled to an additional earnings-related element of the state pension. Most people receive this extra pension, known as Serps (state earnings-related pension scheme), on top of their basic payment. Some will receive only a few pounds extra, but others could be receiving as much as the full basic pension of £184 plus a maximum Serps pension of £230 a week. This adds up to about £21,603 a year. This was typically more valuable to men because they had bigger entitlements after decades of earning more than women and working for longer on average.Anyone who has reached the state pension age since 2016 receives the new state pension. This pays a flat rate of £241 a week or £12,547 a year to anyone with 35 years worth of National Insurance contributions. However, when this new pension was put in place, anyone who had already built up a large top-up under the old system was given transitional protections. This meant that if they already had more than the new flat rate built up under the old rules by 2016, they could lock in that higher figure. This was mainly a perk for men, who were far more likely to have built up these extras.Declining Impact of Transitional ProtectionsSir Steve says that with every passing year these protections become less relevant, because it gets harder to have built up a big Serps pension by 2016 the younger you are, as less of your working life is pre-2016. What this means is that protected payments help men more than women but are becoming less important overall.Five years ago more than one in four men who reached state pension age had one of these protections, equivalent to nearly 90,000 men that year. Meanwhile, just 14 per cent of women had this perk, about 46,700 women. This year, one in five men and one in ten women still receive these boosts. As the number continues to drop each year, so will the advantage that men had over women when it came to the state pension. This will mean that from next year, women are likely to overtake men in receiving larger payouts on average.